Brother against Brother

This week, while researching a client’s family line, I came across three brothers who were all of age during the Civil War. I made a note to check for military records before moving on to other priorities—fifteen of their aunts and uncles, for starters, plus a grandfather who fought in the Revolution and a more distant relative who appeared to have immigrated to the Virginia colony from Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century.

Let’s just say I’m glad I remembered to circle back. What I discovered includes outlaw guerrilla fighters, brother fighting brother, brother maybe even killing brother, brother getting run out of the army, and, to boot, a hidden family. There was even a point, as I was transcribing a record, when I literally gasped.

Always remember to circle back is what I’m saying.

The three brothers lived in western Virginia, and one of them, Cornelius, named his sons Philip Sheridan and Daniel Sherman, suggesting (rather strongly!) that he supported the Union. And indeed Cornelius served as an officer first in Co. D of the 9th West Virginia Infantry and then, after his initial enlistment expired, in Co. D of the 1st West Virginia Veteran Infantry. His record is, for lack of a better word, boring. I’m sure the experience was anything but; for now, though, his stories don’t show up in any sources.

What about his older brother Perry? I found no military record to indicate either Union or Confederate service, so I did what all professional genealogists learn to do in professional genealogist school: I googled his name. Hoo boy! Brother Perry, it turns out, joined a band of Confederate irregulars, or guerrilla fighters, in Calhoun County, Virginia, called the Moccasin Rangers. Irregulars were not officially soldiers, and many did not feel particularly obliged to the rules of war, such as they were at that time. So while Confederate officials did not discourage such partisans, neither did they necessarily claim them.

Anyway, Perry’s approach to defending Confederate interests in the gulches and glades of West Virginia tended toward the murderously violent. He soon became a notorious figure and one to whom many legends stuck. Folks said he carried with him the scalps of thirty-eight Union men he had killed. Another story has him promising a Confederate general one jacket button each from a hundred Yankee kills in exchange for a prized sniper rifle. As you might imagine, a whole new set of legends accompanies his feats with that rifle.

Now enter the third brother, James P. He served as an officer in Co. C of the 10th West Virginia Infantry, and on December 27, 1861, the paper in Wheeling published a letter from one of his sergeants praising the regiment and James, in particular. Just a few weeks earlier, the sergeant wrote, James “and a squad of men marched on a band of guerillas, and put them to flight, shooting one of them in the back. They then burned their quarters to the ground.”

You can see what’s coming. One brother’s a guerrilla; one brother’s in a Union regiment hunting guerrillas. Of course, James and Perry should meet in battle—or at least a skirmish. It happened in May 1862 at a place called Welch Glades in Webster County, where the Moccasin Rangers had been hiding out. “The guerrillas were located by the Federal forces,” according to one account, “and in a hand to hand conflict, James killed his brother Perry.”

Did it really happen this way? No one seems to know for sure; historians can’t even agree on the day it happened. Meanwhile, one of the Union colonels reportedly involved in tracking Perry doesn’t exist, or at least as far as I can tell. And a colorized photograph of Perry circulating online shows him posing in a Confederate dress uniform, complete with officer’s sword—except that he was never a uniformed Confederate soldier. (I need to remember to circle back to that!)

This is not the end of the story, though.

With brother Perry dead and brother Cornelius not making any news over in the 9th West Virginia, I investigated what happened next to brother James. He must have been a hero, right? Perhaps, but his wasn’t exactly a storybook ending. In his file I found a letter from the commanding officer of the 10th West Virginia, T. M. Harris, recommending his young lieutenant be dismissed from service.

Why? What had he done? When I first skimmed the letter I noticed that the the colonel cites issues of “moral character” and “conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman.” I immediately scrolled through the other documents, looking for a better explanation and not finding one. Finally I decided to transcribe the colonel’s letter—transcribing, among other things, forces you to read very closely. “ … conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman; …” I squinted to see what the next word was, a word I hadn’t even noticed earlier. That’s when I gasped.

Bigamy.

Now genealogy primarily concerns itself with family relationships—the use of historical records and DNA evidence to build a family tree. All that business of brother against brother is, strictly speaking, outside the scope of genealogy (at least as narrowly defined). Bigamy, though. This brings us back to the family tree. Multiple wives tends to mean multiple families. And sure enough, our J. P. was busy in that regard. In 1858 he married a woman named Rebecca and the 1860 federal census shows them living together as a family. Come 1870, however, Rebecca is on her own with four children, the youngest of whom, a daughter, was born in 1864.

Where is James? He’s across the gulch, working at a mill and living with a woman called Elizabeth. It’s unclear whether they had married or, for that matter, whether he and Rebecca had divorced. Whatever the case, James and Elizabeth had a daughter who, it turns out, also was born in 1864! The broader family, meanwhile, at least as it is remembered online in family trees and memorials, carries no trace of this scandal. Or of James’s extra daughter.

Sometimes the simplest bit of circling back, just checking on a few things, can lead to … well, this. An epic story, an unknown family. So what happens when I follow brother James forward? I guess I’ll have to find out.

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